Guitar Duo Opal Ocean Are So Similar It's "Creepy"

Opal Ocean shot a new music video the day before our chat and Nadav Tabak, one half of the guitar duo, admits he's "a little exhausted". "We ended up picking one of the songs off our album, which is a seven-minute-long song, and so after doing many takes, rocking out to a seven-minute song, my neck is broken." Sounds like there was a bit of head-banging involved then? "Yes, definitely," he confesses.

Tabak observes there are so many similarities between him and his other musical half, Alex Champ, that it's "creepy": "We were both actually living in New Zealand, but we didn't know each other. We were both busking, we both played guitar the same amount of time; we're the same age... We actually went to the same concerts and didn't even know we were at the same concert, like, we were seeing the same bands. And he was doing restaurant gigs and I was doing restaurant gigs, just [in] a different part of town."

"I stalked him on Instagram, and contacted him through there."

On how that pair met, Tabak recalls, "When we came over here I was actually busking at the Queen Victoria Market and his partner saw me, and she heard me busking, and she thought I was him!" he laughs. "And so when she met me she was like, 'Oh, you have to come back and have a jam,' and that's kind of how it started. It was, like, woah! Everything just kind of fit right, you know?"

Opal Ocean's style of music is "very niche", according to Tabak: "Flamenco guitar techniques mixed with progressive-rock arrangements and kind of heavy metal ideas. So it's just, like, a complete fusion of a whole bunch of stuff."

In a live setting, Tabak says Opal Ocean bring a "dancey, energetic vibe". The band played Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and Tabak tells, "We were busking, we did 28 days straight and it was long days but it was a really awesome experience. It was our first time properly going overseas as the band and it was a great experience being able to play to European audiences at a huge festival like that, but we went so underprepared thinking that a Scottish summer was…" Actually summer? Tabak laughs, "Yeah, so we got drowned out nearly every other day, which was interesting."

Opal Ocean released their debut album Lost Fables last month, and Tabak acknowledges this as a "career highlight" for the band. "It's the biggest project that either of us have ever been part of… We worked with some really awesome people." The album was mixed by Mark Lewis, who Tabak points out is "a big mixing engineer from the States for metal bands and he's done big bands like Trivium, Conquering Dystopia and a whole bunch of well-known acts." So how did they recruit Lewis? "I stalked him on Instagram," Tabak chuckles, "and contacted him through there". Now that Opal Ocean are on Lewis's radar, Tabak enthuses, "He's always there as a contact in the industry in the States, which is just really awesome to know that we have that."

Given that their upcoming gig is billed as a Xmas Metal Extravaganza, will Opal Ocean be working up any metal versions of Christmas carols? "You know what's funny? Like, we might not, but I know that Malcura might; they love doing their flamenco metal covers, like, they do Daft Punk and a few other ones so I wouldn't be surprised if they do a cheeky number."